


The Dryad and the Witch

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Category: Cinderella (Fairy Tale), Cinderella - All Media Types, Rapunzel (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Abuse, F/F, and obvious witch and stepmother fuckery, cinderella is a dryad, cinderella's dad is a dick, hi this is long, rapunzel is a witch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 09:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17261354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: Her mother is bark and blossoming spring clad in human dress and human smiles, her voice like wind in Cinderella’s ears. She is a child when her mother takes her last breath and freezes into a hazel tree, her bark smooth and soft, her branches swaying in the breeze. Her father’s face is ashen, his mouth a hard line, his hand deep in her shoulder, the bark that is her skin groaning underneath it.The witch’s hair is frail and lies in white trails on her shoulders, her teeth spitting tar and blood at Rapunzel’s feet, at her hands. “My wonderful child”, she says, her voice dancing around the room, tightening the ribbons around Rapunzel’s chest, the pink around her throat. “My beautiful, wonderful child. Soon you will be old enough.” Her hands linger on Rapunzel’s hair, long and thick and braided as it is.





	The Dryad and the Witch

  1. Her mother is bark and blossoming spring clad in human dress and human smiles, her voice like wind in Cinderella’s ears. She is a child when her mother takes her last breath and freezes into a hazel tree, her bark smooth and soft, her branches swaying in the breeze. Her father’s face is ashen, his mouth a hard line, his hand deep in her shoulder, the bark that is her skin groaning underneath it.  
  
“You must understand”, he says, his voice a broken tumble. “You must understand your mother, my child.” Cinderella nods, can feel the tears welling in her eyes. She blinks them away and smiles at her father and the grey all over him, and feels the knothole on her cheek shift.  
  
“Of course, father”, she says, as she always does when her father looks at her, his eyes dark and sombre. ”Of course”, she says when he looks at her hair and the blossoms blooming from it, in lilacs and blues, in pinks and reds, in greens and yellows, and frowns, tells her to groom it properly.  
  
So she picks each petal from the green flowing down her back, looks at the girl staring at her from behind the mirror. Her father hums.  
  
“Of course, father”, she says when he runs his hands through her hair and lingers at its roots, tells her that she would look lovely with her hair auburn or black as tar.  
  
So she kneels in front of the fireside, her knees groaning and aching, her hands trembling, and dusts her hair and all that greens in its ashes. It stains her dress and her wooden skin, so she reaches for it, pulls it into a knot, tight at the back of her head.  
  
“I love you, my child”, says her father, then, a private smile behind his spectacles and Cinderella smiles, smiles.



 

 

  1. The witch’s hair is frail and lies in white trails on her shoulders, her teeth spitting tar and blood at Rapunzel’s feet, at her hands. “My wonderful child”, she says, her voice dancing around the room, tightening the ribbons around Rapunzel’s chest, the pink around her throat. “My beautiful, wonderful child. Soon you will be old enough.” Her hands linger on Rapunzel’s hair, long and thick and braided as it is.  
  
“Old enough for what?”, she asks, can feel her voice breaking as the witch’s hands still at the back of her head. The air around her is lazy and thick, trickling down her throat and when the witch hooks a crooked finger under Rapunzel’s chin, firm against her skin, the air stills in her lungs.  
  
“You will see, my love”, the witch says and smiles, the corners of her mouth stretching, her eyes crinkling. “You will know soon enough.”  
  
The witch tends to her garden at night, a beautiful stretch of usefulness; vegetables and fruit, big and ripe even when the snow falls in thick flakes and Rapunzel’s breath paints fog into the sky. The fence is small, and brittle, dead wood painted white, the paint crumbling and cracking, the beans growing all over it.  
  
When Rapunzel’s hair didn’t yet reach the ground, when her hands weren’t yet stained and the air around her was still air, a man stepped over the fence and reached for the lettuce framing the small path, the cucumbers, ripe and full of water, the peaches hanging low and heavy from their branches, his hands and eyes a picture of greed.  
  
“Look at this fool, my love”, the witch had said, her face a sneer. “With his hands all over my garden.” Rapunzel hadn’t answered. Instead, she’d stared at the man and his hollow cheeks, the way he shivered with every step. “I shall let him have the plants”, the witch had said, then. “But he will pay for them.” Rapunzel had put her hands on the windowsill, her heart a flutter in her chest and the witch had clicked her tongue. “All things have a price, my love. I wonder when you fools will understand that.” 



 

 

  1. Cinderella’s father remarries and she spends her morning dusting her hair in embers, her skin in flour. It stains her dress, and the scarf woven into her hair, but she curtsies and smiles when her stepmother turns to her, her lips red as scarlet, her dress thin white lace and crimson satin. She hums and Cinderella’s father looks at her, his eyes dark and soft.  
  
Her stepsisters are delicate little things, their hair in perfect ringlets, one brunette, the other blonde, their skin porcelain, not a blemish, not a stain, their cheeks perfectly flushed, their lashes curled, their skirts ruffled. Cinderella smiles at them and they raise their heads, their lips a perfect almost smile. “Welcome”, Cinderella says, and her stepmother frowns.  
  
“Whatever did you teach your child?”, she asks, her voice soft and low. “The poor thing must have slept in the ashes, look at her cheeks!” Cinderella bows her head, thinks of the apron around her waist, the rips in her skirts.  
  
“Why didn’t you change, my child?”, her father asks, doesn’t look at her.  
  
“I was tending to the garden, father”, she says, doesn’t mention that she’d spent longer than usual by the hazel tree, her cheeks wet. “I did not know you would arrive so soon.”  
  
“Change into something decent, then”, her father waves his hand. “And tell the staff lunch is in no less than thirty minutes.” Cinderella nods.  
  
“Of course, father”, she says, gathers her skirts with one hand, and runs inside, her feet bare on the cold stone floor.  
  
She doesn’t own dresses with ruffles bleached white, waistlines sharp and small, or colours quite as vibrant as her new sisters’, so she weaves the band from her hair, sheds her working dress and puts on her best dress, soft on her skin.



 

 

  1. When Rapunzel’s hair is long enough to stretch through her room, draped over her bed and over the shelves, the witch smiles at her, the air around them still, and takes Rapunzel and the ribbons around her, takes her tar stained skin and drags her up a spiral staircase, the stairs uneven under her feet. With each step, the stone crumbles underneath her feet, urging her higher and higher.  
  
When they reach the top, it is as if there had never been a staircase at all, the ground below her nothing but solid rock, the witch’s magic whispering in its every sigh. “Here is where you shall live, my love”, the witch says and opens the heavy wooden window shutter in a flurry of dust and sunlight. “Isn’t it beautiful?”  
  
Rapunzel drapes her hair on the mattress in the middle of the barren room, heavy and braided. “I suppose”, she says and sits down. The air around her is old and barely alive, but it flutters around her and through her breathing when she smiles.  
  
She doesn’t ask all the questions burning on her tongue, doesn’t ask about the stone all around her, about the emptiness and the cold. She doesn’t ask for a way out, for a garden. Instead, she smiles, smiles, smiles and the witch combs her hands through her hair.  
  
“Come”, she says. “Let me braid your hair again, my love. You’ve ruffled it.” Her hands, stained black and green, unravel Rapunzel’s hair, the shimmer of it almost white against her skin and Rapunzel closes her eyes and counts each brush stroke, each touch, each fold. “My love”, the witch sings, her voice crawling into each crack, each corner, and Rapunzel’s breath hitches when the air around and inside her stills, viscous. “I’ll keep you safe, my love, and away from humans and princes and all their lies.” 



 

 

  1. “The King is giving a ball!” Her stepmother’s voice is like syrup seeping under her skin and her stepsisters gasp, their mouths perfect circles, grasping for each other’s hands. “And all eligible maidens are invited!”  
  
Cinderella raises her head, squares her jaw and all the ash pulled to a knot at the back of her head, the flour dusting her skin. Her father smiles at her, his glasses glinting in the candlelight, her stepmother’s hand on his. She is wearing gloves, bleached and as white as daisies, her dress a deep shade pf plum, her lips curling. “I am sure you will find something to do while we are gone, my dear”, he says, his voice soft. “Your sisters will appreciate your help.”  
  
Cinderella says nothing, thinks of the hazel tree in the garden, strong and blooming even now as her stepmother stalks through the house, not a speck of dirt on her gloves, even now as her father looks at her hair, dying and wilting from the roots up and sees nothing wrong with it. She thinks of her stepsisters and the hours they spend in front of the mirror, powdering their skin until it is as smooth and white as porcelain, painting their lips red, their cheeks pink. She thinks of how she has never heard them speak any louder than the smallest wind chime sounds. Each day, she laces them into their corsets, and each day she is told to lace them tighter.  
  
“And so they will”, her stepmother says and runs her fingers over Cinderella’s hair. “We must find good husbands for them.” She pulls her hand back, her white glove stained ashen. “Oh. I think you need to wash up, my dear.”  
  
Cinderella bows her head. “Of course”, she says, as she always does, feels her hair wilting at her shoulders.



 

 

  1. The witch uses her hair to get into the barren room she’s left Rapunzel to live in, each morning and each evening as the sun rises and sets. “My wonderful child”, she says, each time. “You are safe here.” Rapunzel closes her eyes, then, and lets the witch rebraid her hair, her hands like claws against her skin.  
  
The witch leaves her alone during the day, and Rapunzel opens the wooden blinds, sits on the windowsill, the sun warm on her face, the air light and soft in her lungs. And she sings. She sings all the songs she heard the witch sing when she was a child and still as human as their neighbours, sings all the songs she heard the woman across the fence sing, with her voice soft in a way the witch’s voice has never been, sings of birds and maidens and princes and sunshine. She sings of flowers, too, watches as they grow from the cracks, sings as moss covers the cold floor, soft and warm under her feet. And, on the fifty-fifth day, when the witch frowns at her plants, at the flowers in her hair, the moss padding the ground, the ranks on her shelf, a sapling sprouts in the corner, reaching for the sun.  
  
The witch sighs at that. “You shouldn’t encourage them”, she says as she plucks the flowers from Rapunzel’s hair. “What use is it? You cannot eat them and no one sees them.”  
  
“You do”, Rapunzel says then and the witch hesitates in her braiding and clicks her tongue.  
  
“You silly child.” She cards her hands through Rapunzel’s hair, and Rapunzel feels the magic oozing from them, the air still around them. “I see no beauty in these useless things. What good are colourful flowers, what good is this thing growing all over you? You cannot use it. Not for nourishment nor to ensnare the fools around you. You’re wasting magic, my love.” 



 

 

  1. _My little ashen fool_ , her father calls her, his voice soft as it was when he spoke to her mother, and he kisses her forehead. “Thank you, my child, for managing the household when we’re gone.” Cinderella nods, and smiles, feels her bark stretch, her knees ache, and her stepsisters mount the carriage, their waists so small Cinderella could cup them with her hands, their hair in curls, their dresses silk and lace, draped delicately over their petticoats. “You look beautiful”, she says and means _you look like a doll I’d have yearned for as a child, you look like someone took all the air from inside you and turned it to nothing, you look like a dream in which I choke on all the eyes on me, on all this fabric tying me to a bundle of smiles, do you not feel as if you might scream?_ Her stepsisters smile, their lips painted pink, and Cinderella doesn’t look at her stepmother.  
  
The hazel tree in the garden is in full bloom, yellow and crimson, and Cinderella sits at its root, closes her eyes. The well drops at her feet, and when the wind rustles the tree’s leaves, she reaches for the rope with trembling hands. The water feels like a breath of fresh air on her hair, her skin, the cracks in her bark, and she sighs as the wind around her laughs into her hair.  
  
“I want to go to the ball, mother”, she says, then, quietly against the bark. “Father is so happy, now, with his new wife and his new daughters, and I know I am not eligible, not for whatever it is the King wishes to do, but -” She takes a breath, thinks of her stepsisters and their excitement, thinks of learning dances as a child, with light feet and a fluttering heart. “I really do want to go.” The hazel tree stays silent and unmoving, but the flowers around her grow a little brighter, a little more colourful.  
  
_You’re not human, my child,_ her mother had said, softly, when her breath was a rattle in her throat and her voice was but a whisper. _So remember one thing, and one thing only: If there was a thing you were aching for, a thing you yearn for, do not hesitate to ask the tree. It will give you what you wish.  
  
_So Cinderella runs her hands over the tree’s bark, its ridges and creaks, and curls towards it. “Mother dearest”, she says, her voice blown away by the wind around her. “Will you rock your tree, and shake it too, throw gold and silver on me so that I may go to the ball?”



 

 

  1. Her sapling, her sprout, blossoms into a tree, its bark soft and rigid on her skin and Rapunzel spends her days singing to it, nourishing its roots. “Welcome to the world, look how it greets you”, she sings, her voice a quiet whisper. “Welcome to the world, can you hear it cheer?”  
  
There is no sunlight where it grows, no soil to feed it, so she weaves her song around it so carefully. And in return, the tree sheds its bark for her, sighing against the wind around them. She takes the bark and all her tree offers her, and grinds it to a pulp, sticking to her fingers, all her magic gathering in her throat.  
  
She makes paper. It’s rough against her fingers, and coarse, and whatever she writes on it comes out uneven, ink splattering from her pen. And still, she keeps this paper, hidden in cracks and under the mattress.  
  
“Magic is a frail thing, my love”, the witch says, her voice a cackle sticking to Rapunzel’s skirts. “And no magic comes without a price. Do not waste it on flowers.” And so Rapunzel raises her head, and her voice, and the wind in her room without doors, without stairs to lead her away, and pours all that she knows from her throat. She reaches for the sun with it, for the visions of the witch’s garden she had as a child.  
  
She writes down what she knows, in letters as small and narrow as her shaking hands can manage.  
  
_A witch’s magic is not to be bargained for_ , she writes, and _Magic stains your hands, your tongue, the crook of your neck, like tar dripping from you.  
  
__Never answer a plea, or do a favour. Your magic isn’t softness blooming from within you, isn’t human foolishness. I don’t believe that. I’ve grown all this softness, all this life around me with nothing but my voice, do not tell me what my magic is.  
  
__Each witch was human once, her heart aflutter, her voice that of a child. Remember the child you were.  
  
__Do not take another’s child.  
  
__Do not take another’s child, not for all the treasures in the world, do not take a child from all that loves it to raise it behind windows and in shadows.  
  
__I do not belong to her. I’ve no name._



 

 

  1. Her hair is blooming. Violets and roses and daisies and lilies and croci against the green of her hair, and it feels as if the world has come to a halt. The dress her mother has dropped on her is a dream of goldspun leaves, a flurry of spring on her skin, and the slippers are rock turned glass, snug on her feet.  
  
She dances all night, dances in giggles and laughs and breathlessness, dances minuet and waltzes, her feet light, her dress spinning around her, her hair blooming and open. She dances until suddenly, it is no longer a nameless, faceless man holding her. This man, with his dimpled smile and his dark eyes, wears a crown on his curled hair and Cinderella takes a step back.  
  
“Oh no, miss, please, there’s no need to run from me.” His voice is deep and soft as he reaches for her hand and bows. “I’ve not introduced myself, I apologize.”  
  
“No, I-” Cinderella takes a breath and a step back. “I apologize, your highness, you mustn’t -” She thinks of her stepsisters and all the hope laced into their dresses, clears her throat. “I am not who you wish to dance with, sire, I am sure.”  
  
The prince cocks his head. “Are you not? You see, I have watched you all evening, and I can tell that you are a splendid dancer. Who would I be not to dance with someone who possesses feet as light and as skilful as yours?” He lifts her hand and places his lips on it, gently. “Allow me this dance, miss, and I shall leave you to it.”  
  
His eyes are dark and soft and in the candlelight they are almost the same shade as her father’s, so she bows her head and nods. “As you wish, your Highness”, she says and the prince smiles and curls his hand around her waist.  
  
One dance turns two, turns three, turns hours upon hours, the prince’s soft laugh in her ears, his hand soft and gentle on her waist, her hair blooming under the chandeliers until the old church clock chimes and Cinderella can see her family gather their things from the corner of her eyes.  
  
“I am so sorry, I have to go.” She untangles herself from him and curtsies, smiles. He reaches for her hand, but she pulls it away. “My apologies, your highness.”  
  
“What’s your name?”, he calls after her, but Cinderella’s mind is a swirl of panicked haze, is a swirl of _I must get home before they do, they mustn’t know, they cannot see me like this. I have to run.  
  
_And run, she does, her feet bare, carrying the slippers, as she strays from the paths and each flower, each strand of grass, each tree makes way for her and the fear in her throat. When she passes the threshold, her fingers already picking the flowers from her hair, the gold her mother has spun drops from her and her hair wilts.  
  
She is home before her stepmother has even taken a breath to scold her for the ash on the tiled floor.



 

 

  1. The voice calling out to her when the sun is at its highest point is deeper than the witch’s voice, no magic laced into it, so Rapunzel gathers her magic and all its stains in her throat and throws her hair, thinks of all the songs of princes and maidens, of happy endings.  
  
The prince is heavier than the witch, nothing but her braids and her magic to carry him to her and when he steps on the windowsill, he takes a deep breath, his light eyes on her. “By God”, he says. “You are lovely.” Rapunzel doesn’t answer. Instead, she pulls her hair up and reaches for her tree, her song still etched into its wood.  
  
“Oh no”, the prince says, then, and takes a step towards her, reaches for her. “Please be not afraid. I’ve only come to rescue you.”  
  
Rapunzel feels her chest heaving at that, her voice brittle in her throat. “Rescue me? Who are you to determine that I need rescuing?”  
  
He blinks at that, furrows his brows. The air around them is quick now, quicker still, and Rapunzel wills it to a halt. “Do you not live in a tower with no doors, no staircase? Are you not held prisoner by this woman?”  
  
Rapunzel raises her head, her hair heavy on her shoulders, the floor, the shelf. “I asked you who you are.”  
  
“I am the prince of this kingdom, I am heir to the throne.” He bows and Rapunzel’s breath grows heavier as she looks at his skin, smooth and thin, his exposed neck.  
  
“As such you surely have better things to do than anger witches, sire”, she says, then, her voice thin. She remembers a man who once dared put his hands on the witch’s vegetables, how he stained the snow blood-red and fear-blue, and she curls her hand around her tree. “Please leave. You are wasting your time.”  
  
The prince straightens, his hair almost white in the sunlight. “Miss”, he says. “I do not wish to leave you here at a witch’s mercy. What decent person would-”  
  
“Your highness.” Rapunzel smiles, feels it stiff on her lips. “Whatever it is you think a decent person would or would not do, believe me, you do not wish for a witch’s wrath. Please. Leave.” She drops her hair out the window again, and looks at the prince’s eyes, bright and curious as they are.  
  
The prince nods curtly, presses his lips together. “Very well.” He steps on the windowsill and bows again. “I shall leave. Good-bye, miss.”



 

 

  1. “Do you suppose he shall dance with the stranger again?”, her stepmother asks his father as they prepare to go to the dance, again. “She did have him captivated with those flowers in her hair.” Cinderella bows her head, her cheeks blooming as she feels her blood rise.  
  
“Well”, her father says, and looks at her stepsisters, their hair adorned with blossoms, one red, the other white. “If it is the flowers, I suppose one of you will suit him quite as nicely.” Her stepsisters don’t answer. Instead, they reach for each other, their hands soft and white and unblistered. Their dresses match the flowers in their hair, today, and Cinderella thinks of her own hair, brown and ashen at the back of her head.  
  
“We will see you tomorrow, my child”, her father says and Cinderella nods, her hands curled around her skirts.  
  
“Of course, father.”  
  
The dress her mother gifts her is webbed lace and silverspun blossoms, bright against her wooden skin, her hair a meadow of daffodils. The skirts are slim, half clinging to her legs and when she looks into the mirror she feels as if her mother is staring back at her, smiling ever so softly.  
  
The prince spots her as soon as she enters the room, and runs towards her. “Miss”, he says, and bows, smiles his dimpled smile. “You’ve returned.”  
  
Cinderella curtsies, can feel her cheeks blooming again. “My apologies for my departure yesterday.”  
  
“As long as you do not plan on doing it again I shan’t hold it against you.” The prince reaches for her hand, spun in webbed lace. “May I ask for a dance, then, miss?” He looks softer than yesterday, she thinks as she stares at him, her breath in short bursts.  
  
“Your Highness, I do not wish to be rude, but don’t you think my monopolizing your attention will be frowned upon?” Dance with one of my stepsisters, she thinks, they do wish for it so dearly.  
  
The Prince laughs, softly, and shakes his head. “Is not the best dancer in the room a good choice?” He lets go of her hand and straightens, his smile still dimpled. “Will you do me the honour?”  
  
Cinderella lets herself be pulled in, the room a whisper around them, the candles flickering as she takes step after step with him, closes her eyes and sinks into the music. Again, one dance turns into many, the prince’s hand on her back, the music like whispers around them. And again, at the stroke of the bell, she runs from him, barefoot and straying from the path, her heart in her throat.  
  
Again, she drops to her knees by the fireplace just as her stepmother steps through the door.



 

 

  1. The prince returns the next day, and this time Rapunzel doesn’t let him through her window. Instead, she grabs her braids and suspends him in the air, her magic flowing from her hands, staining them.  
  
“I told you to leave”, she says, and feels the venom drip from her voice, the moss at her feet withering. She closes her eyes and takes a breath. “Sire, may I ask why you’re back?”  
  
The prince holds onto her hair, his hands scratched open and dotted red. “You’re not safe here, miss”, he says slowly and pulls himself up until his eyes are level with hers, her shoulders squared, her back straight. “And I wish to help you.”  
  
Rapunzel stares at his hands, the red staining her hair, and the song still forming in her throat. “You’ve cut yourself”, she says, finally, furrows her brows. “What happened?” The moss at her feet grows softer at that, curls into her skin and the prince shrugs, his whole body moving with it.  
  
“There is a hedge of roses at the bottom of your tower, miss”, he says, his voice heaving. “And I was looking for a door, you see. One that I might have missed.”  
  
When Rapunzel was still a child, and her hair only reached the floor when it was unbraided, she’d plucked her first rose, a stubborn, beautiful thing that stung her child fingers until her hand was as red as the rose’s blossoms. “They think these are flowers of love”, the witch had said and frowned at the blood on Rapunzel’s hand. “The fools. Remember this, my love; a rose is a flower made of thorns and blood, it is what grows easiest for a witch in anguish.”  
  
She looks at the prince, now, his stained hands and his light eyes, and she takes a step aside. “Come in”, she says quietly. “And sit.”  
  
The prince stumbles into her room in a flurry of blossoms and sunlight, and he holds onto the wall as he does, smiling at her. Rapunzel pulls her hair up and gestures towards her mattress.  
  
“Sit, your Highness”, she says. “And give me your hands.”  
  
“My hands?” The prince furrows his brows, but does as he’s told. “Why do I need to -”  
  
He stops speaking as she reaches for his hands with her own, stained black and brimming with all the magic in her voice. When she lets go, his cuts have healed, the red now nothing but white dots on his skin.  
  
“How did you - ?”  
  
Rapunzel sighs. “Sire, you need to leave. You cannot help me, not with this. Go find a maiden that is more easily saved, and not half a witch without a name. Now leave, please, or you will bring a witch’s wrath upon you.”  
  
The prince leaves, and Rapunzel sings away every blood stain, every trace of him.



 

 

  1. In the third night of dancing, of the prince holding her close all night, his laughter soft and gentle against her bark, her family leaves early.  
  
And when Cinderella runs home, with the strike of the clock, only one slipper clutched close to her chest, her father waits for her at the door, his eyes dark and sombre. “Child”, he says, his voice quiet and still, “child, whatever do you think you are doing?”  
  
He takes her dress, a tumble of soft wood stitched to a skirt, a corset, a collar with her hair growing all around it, and throws it into the fire. “You understand, of course”, he says, as Cinderella watches all that her mother has gifted her crackle to dust, “that I must do this?”  
  
“You took your sisters’ chances and spat at them”, her stepmother says and her sisters stay ever silent, ever poised, looking at her from big, dark eyes. “What will become of them now?”  
  
They take her slipper, take the flowers from her hair, and as Cinderella stares at the fire, the embers and their glow, her stepmother pulls her sisters from the kitchen, and her father locks the door. Cinderella remains, the flames casting soft shadows on her face, her skirts ashen and stained once more, her breath shaking.  
  
She couldn’t say how long she stood there, staring at the fire and all it is eating up, when she hears shouts from behind the door. “Mother”, a voice screams, loud and breaking, and it is only when she hears the sound of footsteps that she realizes whose plea this is. “Please, mother, don’t make me do this!” Her sister’s voice is welling up with tears and Cinderella feels her hands against the heavy wood of the door before she even decides to bang against it.  
  
“Don’t be silly”, her stepmother says, her voice still soft, still gentle. “When you marry him, you will never need to walk again.” There is the crunch of bones, a scream and a splatter and Cinderella’s throat is raw, suddenly, her eyes burning. _No, whatever it is you’re doing, no, no, no.  
  
_It doesn’t help. There are murmurs for a while, the sound of someone cursing, and then someone else screams, again.  
  
“Mother, no, please, no.” It is a string of begging falling on unhearing ears and Cinderella’s voice rises, rises to the top of her lungs, the ache in her fists, and again there is a scream, a crunch and the sound of something hitting the floor.  
  
_Stepmother, what have you done?_



 

  1. The prince returns a third time, with the setting sun, and before Rapunzel can send all her magic, all her music down to warn him, the witch grows roses all around him, thorned and blood stained and Rapunzel’s magic withers in her throat as she watches the thorns dig into the prince’s soft skin, the brightness of his eyes.  
  
“You selfish child”, the witch says, and her voice is a shriek, Rapunzel’s plants cower at her feet. “You selfish, foolish thing, is this what you want? Is this what you’ve used your magic for?”  
  
She pulls at Rapunzel’s hair until she drops to her feet, her hands clutching the witch’s skirt. “A human prince, with skin so thin even a daisy would rip through it? Is this what you’ve sung for, sitting in the sun all day as if you could claim it back?”  
  
Rapunzel bows her head, her breath in short spurts, her stomach a pit of tar, her magic spikes against her windpipe, the air still around them, and so thick her breaths turn to gasps. There is the sound of something sharp, a flash in the corner of her eyes, and the witch’s hand at the top of her head, pulling her up, up, up, her hair a tumble at her feet, her head lighter now.  
  
“You belong to me, child, and to me alone. You were my price, and no one shall take you from me.” The witch’s voice is a howl, now, a wolf snapping at Rapunzel’s feet and she reaches for the hands holding her up, clutched around her. The pain comes in a flash when the witch lets go and Rapunzel gasps from it, hot and sharp on her scalp.  
  
“Least of all a human who doesn’t know his own downfall if it stares him in the face.”  
  
Rapunzel’s head is a sea of black, her breath heaving, gasping, the air clinging like honey to her lungs, ever still. And so the witch takes her away again, and Rapunzel’s hair is short, her eyes fluttering, the moor around her cold and damp and dying.



 

 

  1. The world seems as if it came to a halt around her, the wilting flowers in her hair suddenly nothing but crumbling black, her fists against the dead wooden door, her throat a tumbling knot tangled with her voice. She can hear her stepmother’s voice, hushed and sweet, can feel the ground shifting under her as suddenly the door opens and she looks at the prince and his curled hair again.  
  
“Did you not tell me that there were no other young ladies in this house?”, he says and reaches for Cinderella, his hands rough on her bark, his eyes in her hair. “Madam, I do not like being deceived.”  
  
“It is only our maid”, her stepmother says and waves her hand, bows her head when the prince turns around to face her. “My husband’s late wife left it to him. Surely it isn’t who you are looking for.”  
  
“I am not”, Cinderella says and feels her voice hollowing as she takes a step back. “I must apologize, my prince, but I am certain I am not who you set out to find.”  
  
“Let me be the judge of that, miss”, he says, his voice soft, his eyes dark as her father’s as he sinks to his knees and pulls a slipper from his coat. A slipper made of glass, a slipper molded of crystallised blossoms. Cinderella shakes her head, feels her hair pull at her, urging her closer.  
  
“Your Highness, I beg of you -”, and before she can finish, he has slipped the shoe on her foot, fits it to her skin, his eyes alight. Cinderella feels as if she could drop into the fire behind her, into the heat of her stepmother’s eyes on her, the tears of her sisters.  
  
“It fits”, the prince says, slowly, and straightens his back, a smile on his lips. “You are who I’ve been looking for.”  
  
Cinderella shakes her head. “I assure you, I am honoured, but -”  
  
“Nonsense, child.” Her stepmother’s voice is sickly sweet, like syrup sticking to her dying skin and Cinderella lowers her head at the weight of it. “Have we not taught you to be grateful?”  
  
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she stares at the floor, stares at her feet, one bare, the other wrapped in glass, both covered in soot, then the prince’s – fine polished leather, not a speck of dirt – and her sisters’. Satin pumps, crème and apricot coloured, dripping red, crusted brown and suddenly Cinderella can feel her hands again, her heart thrashing against her bones, her voice rising from where she has tied it to a small bundle for all her life. She raises her head, looks at her stepmother and her curls, the lace adorning her dress, her pristine gloves.  
  
“What have you done?” Her voice is but a soft whisper, but she can feel her mother’s voice resonating in it, can see the way her father staggers, the way her sisters hold on to each other. “What have you done to them?”



 

 

  1. “Welcome to this world, my love”, Rapunzel sings softly, her fingers curling around the aconite sprouting from the ground at her feet, her voice seeping into all the wetness and dying trees around her. “Watch how it greets you, watch how it wants you.” She can feel her magic in her throat and on her fingers, her hair light and messy and barely to her ears. There is no mirror here, no windowsill to sit on and court the sun, no solid ground to walk on, and the witch’s magic all around her, stilling the air, stilling the world. She’s kneeling in the moors, her dress wet and full of mud, as stained as her skin is, now, feels as if she might be suspended on wires.  
  
“Do not waste your magic on flowers, my love”, the witch had said and Rapunzel had felt her voice shape into a cackle. “You’ve more important things to keep alive.”  
  
So Rapunzel had raised her head and looked at the witch and her sugar sweet smile, and she’d started singing – for all the flowers wilting and suffocating around her, all the trees rotting in the cold waters, all the farns around her ankles and in her hair.  
  
“You named me after the salad you’d ensnared my mother with”, she’d thought as she spat her magic at the witch, “didn’t name me proper, even, you made a thing of me, what do I care what you think my magic is good for? Why shouldn’t I use it on all those you let rot because they’re of no use to you?”  
  
“Don’t be foolish, my love”, the witch had said and left Rapunzel to hang amongst dying plants and rotting soot, the air heavy and slow in her lungs.



 

 

  1. “If I may”, the prince says, his voice as careful as his hands on Cinderella’s waist, “I’ve an offer for you, miss.”  
  
Cinderella, her eyes still on her stepmother, her breathing still heavy, doesn’t reply. Instead, her father moves closer.  
  
“An offer, sire?”  
  
The prince nods. “An offer, yes. For your daughters – all three of them.” He clears his throat. “I’ve looked for you far and wide, miss, but I have to admit that I do not come offering marriage as my father has doubtlessly promised every maiden attending our ball.”  
  
Cinderella furrows her brows, can feel her chest moving slowly. “What do you offer, my prince?”  
  
He smiles softly. “You see, I find myself in dire need of a dancing partner – you would live at court and be free to make whichever connections you wish as long as you attend the royal balls with me.”  
  
Cinderella stares at him, at his curls, his eyes, the way he smiles, and the way he looks at her and her only. “And my sisters?”  
  
He clears his throat and reaches for her hand, pressing his lips to it. “Of course your sisters are welcome to come with you.”  
  
The glass slipper on her foot feels heavy, suddenly and Cinderella can barely feel her own skin, can barely see the prince in front of her, all she sees are her sisters, quiet and bleeding and draped in silk, their skin pale as chalk, and the way her stepmother’s mouth curls downwards.  
  
“You are too generous, my prince”, she says slowly and bows her head.  
  
“What is your answer, then, miss?” He lets go of her hand and straightens his back and Cinderella can’t help the smile on her lips as she looks at him again.  
  
“Yes”, she says. “Of course.”  
  
The prince smiles, smiles, smiles so brightly he could light up the room. “How wonderful!” He reaches for Cinderella’s hand and kisses it, again. “Pray, what is your name, miss?”



 

 

  1. The prince stumbles into her moors on the seventy fifth day, his face a graveyard of scars, hands outstretched.  
  
“Is anyone there?”, he calls, his voice a wavering mess and Rapunzel can feel her voice drop into the water at her knees at the sound, the sight of him. His shirt is torn, his hair tangled, his fingers calloused and red, his trousers stiff with dust.  
  
“What have you done?” She reaches for him, the magic still pouring from her and into all that is still holding on for dear life around her. “You foolish man, have I not told you that you do not wish to enrage a witch?”  
  
“You’re alive”, the prince says and suddenly his hands are all over her, on her waist and on her wrists, and in her hair as he pulls her close to his chest, his damp cheeks. “I thought she’d killed you, miss.”  
  
“She wouldn’t”, Rapunzel says and feels her voice harden and sharpen at the edges. “You however, sire, are lucky to be alive, still.”  
  
He takes a breath as Rapunzel frees herself from his hug, her fingertips now on his scars, uneven and jagged as they are. “I hear witches aren’t picky about their victims, miss.”  
  
His eyes don’t focus on her. The scars slash right through them and he doesn’t look at her properly and Rapunzel feels her chest turn into a swirling pit of dread. “She threw you into the roses”, she says, her voice barely a whisper, his skin warm under her fingertips.  
  
He hums and lets out a shaky breath. “Are you alright, miss?”, he asks and Rapunzel clicks her tongue.  
  
“Better than you”, she says and furrows her brows, her fingers hovering over his eyelids. “It looks painful – feels painful, too.”  
  
Roses are a witch’s agony, her dread manifested in thorns dripping red, wrapped around human flesh, and a witch’s dread lives in you for as long as she feels like the world may as well end today, with your pain on her lips.  
  
“Let me help you”, she says and the prince’s eyes flutter closed.  
  
She doesn’t restore his sight, not with her fingers shivering and her magic draining from her, but she presses her tar stained lips to his scars until they are white lines, painless and just skin once more.  
  
When she has finished and lets go of him, he reaches for her, catches her wrist. “I’ve still come to save you, miss”, he says and raises his head. “So I will.”



 

 

  1. The girl at the arm of the northern kingdom’s prince is a tall thing, towering over her prince and most of his people, her lips dark, her hair in a knot at the back of her head, and Cinderella can barely keep her eyes off of her. There is something about her walk, about the curl in her fingers, about the cold in her eyes that draws her in.  
  
When she was just a sapling, her mother had sung to her, every night – of witches and magic and all the things hiding behind fluttering eyelashes. “Don’t forget, my child”, she’d said, one night, when her bark was already withering, “that a moth does not think a lantern’s light the death sentence it is. To it, there is only the moonlight it follows to safety.”  
  
She has to think of moths, now, as she looks at this girl, this woman and her fingers curled around the prince’s arm.  
  
“Who is she?”, she asks – asks her prince and her sisters and the servants.  
  
_She is a witch_ , the servants tell her.  
  
_She was raised all alone in the woods with just her voice for company_ , her sisters tell her.  
  
_She saved his life_ , her prince tells her and shrugs. _Does it matter what else she is?  
_  
“Witches are a curious thing, my darling”, her mother had said and kissed Cinderella’s cheeks so carefully. “They were all human, once, until they turned their backs to the sun and walked away from it all. You mustn’t pity them, it is their path to walk.”  
  
And now she looks at this woman and can find nothing wrong with moonlight and darkness or the way she leads her prince through the crowd, a smile on her lips, her bare feet on the cold marble floor.



 

 

  1. The dryad in the south kingdom’s prince’s arms is the most beautiful woman she has seen in her life and Rapunzel can feel her breath leave her at the sight of blooming hair and flower petal adorned wooden skin. “Do you know who she is?”, she asks and her prince smiles softly.  
  
“That’s the prince’s dancing partner. He chased her all across the country, apparently she’d been kept as a maid in her own father’s house. He’s awfully fond of her, but rumour has it they aren’t involved.”  
  
“Huh”, says Rapunzel.  
  
“I’ll introduce you”, her prince says and reaches for her hand. “Lead me there?”  
The dryad smiles at her when the princes introduce them, the flowers in her hair unfurling just a bit and Rapunzel can feel her magic slither against her throat as she bows.  
  
“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance”, she says and the dryad – Cinderella – blushes, a trail of blossoms on her cheeks and down her neck. _Oh. Oh dear.  
_  
“I wonder if you would give me the honour of a dance?” Her voice is a soft gush of wind and Rapunzel can feel her magic staining her lips from where it comes to plead her to let it out, curl around this girl and all her flowers.  
  
“If his majesty permits it?” She looks at Cinderella’s prince, who cocks his head and hums softly.  
  
“Of course”, he says, his eyes flitting to her prince, lingering at the scars, the way his hair shimmers in the soft candle light. “If you would be willing to part with your own dancing partner, miss.”  
  
“He’s all yours”, Rapunzel says and places her prince’s hand in his, and her own in Cinderella’s, who wraps her arms around her now, her mouth fitted around voiceless laughter. “I’m Rapunzel”, she says, just as the music starts and Cinderella closes her eyes.




End file.
